Vitae philosophorum

When, thirdly, the father himself arrived, he was just as much attracted to the

Diogenes is said to have been nearly ninety years old when he died. Regarding his death there are several different accounts. One is that he was seized with colic after eating an octopus raw and so met his end. Another is that he died voluntarily by holding his breath. This account was followed by Cercidas of Megalopolis (or of Crete), who in his meliambics writes thus:

Not so he who aforetime was a citizen of Sinope,
1. That famous one who carried a staff, doubled his cloak, and lived in the open air.

But he soared aloft with his lip tightly pressed against his teeth
1. And holding his breath withal. For in truth he was rightly named
2. Diogenes, a true-born son of Zeus, a hound of heaven.

Another version is that, while trying to divide an octopus amongst the dogs, he was so severely bitten on the sinew of the foot that it caused his death. His friends, however, according to Antisthenes in his Successions of Philosophers, conjectured that it was due to the retention of his breath. For he happened to be living in the Craneum, the gymnasium in front of Corinth. When his friends came according to custom and found him wrapped up in his cloak, they thought that he must be asleep, although he was by no means of a drowsy or somnolent habit. They therefore drew aside his cloak and found that

Hence, it is said, arose a quarrel among his disciples as to who should bury him: nay, they even came to blows; but, when their fathers and men of influence arrived, under their direction he was buried beside the gate leading to the Isthmus. Over his grave they set up a pillar and a dog in Parian marble upon it. Subsequently his fellow-citizens honoured him with bronze statues, on which these verses were inscribed:

Time makes even bronze grow old: but thy glory, Diogenes, all eternity will never destroy. Since thou alone didst point out to mortals the lesson of self-sufficingness and the easiest path of life.[*](Anth. Pal. xvi. 334.)

We too have written on him in the proceleusmatic metre:

A. Diogenes, come tell me what fate took you to the world below?
1. D. A dog’s savage tooth.[*](Anth. Pal. vii. 116.)

But some say that when dying he left instructions that they should throw him out unburied, that every wild beast might feed on him, or thrust him into a ditch and sprinkle a little dust over him. But according to others his instructions were that they should throw him into the Ilissus, in order that he might be useful to his brethren.

Demetrius in his work On Men of the Same Name asserts that on the same day on which Alexander died in Babylon Diogenes died in Corinth. He was an old man in the 113th Olympiad.[*](324-321 b.c.)

The following writings are attributed to him. Dialogues:

Seven Tragedies:

Sosicrates in the first book of his Successions, and Satyrus in the fourth book of his Lives, allege that Diogenes left nothing in writing, and Satyrus adds that the sorry tragedies are by his friend Philiscus, the Aeginetan. Sotion in his seventh book declares that only the following are genuine works of Diogenes: On Virtue, On Good, On Love, A Mendicant, Tolmaeus, Pordalus, Casandrus, Cephalion, Philiscus, Aristarchus, Sisyphus, Ganymedes, Anecdotes, Letters.

There have been five men who were named Diogenes. The first, of Apollonia, a natural philosopher.

Now the philosopher is said by Athenodorus in the eighth book of his Walks to have always had a sleek appearance owing to his use of unguents.[*](Cf. Epictet. iii. 22. 88 ὡς Διογένης ἐποίει· στίλβων γὰρ περιήρχετο καὶ αὐτὸ τὸ σῶμα ἐπέστρε φε τοὺς πολλούς.)

Monimus of Syracuse was a pupil of Diogenes; and, according to Sosicrates, he was in the service of a certain Corinthian banker, to whom Xeniades, the purchaser of Diogenes, made frequent visits, and by the account which he gave of his goodness in word and deed, excited in Monimus a passionate admiration of Diogenes. For he forthwith pretended to be mad and proceeded to fling away the small change and all the money on the banker’s table, until at length his master dismissed him; and he then straightway devoted himself to Diogenes. He often followed Crates the Cynic as well, and embraced the like pursuits; whereupon his master, seeing him do this, was all the more persuaded that he was mad.

He came to be a distinguished man; so much so that he is even mentioned by the comic poet Menander. At any rate in one of his plays, The Groom, his words are:

One Monimus there was, a wise man, Philo,
1. But not so very famous.
2. A. He, you mean,
3. Who carried the scrip?
4. B. Nay, not one scrip, but three.
5. Yet never a word, so help me Zeus, spake he
6. To match the saying, Know thyself, nor such
7. Famed watchwords. Far beyond all these he went,
8. Your dusty mendicant, pronouncing wholly vain
9. All man’s supposings.

He has left us, besides some trifles blended with covert earnestness, two books, On Impulses and an Exhortation to Philosophy.

Onesicritus some report to have been an Aeginetan, but Demetrius of Magnesia says that he was a native of Astypalaea. He too was one of the distinguished pupils of Diogenes. His career seems to have resembled that of Xenophon; for Xenophon joined the expedition of Cyrus, Onesicritus that of Alexander; and the former wrote the Cyropaedia, or Education of Cyrus, while the latter has described how Alexander was educated: the one a laudation of Cyrus, the other of Alexander. And in their diction they are not unlike: except that Onesicritus, as is to be expected in an imitator, falls short of his model.

Amongst other pupils of Diogenes were Menander, who was nicknamed Drymus or Oakwood, a great